


Catnap

by Guardy



Category: Emergency! (TV 1972)
Genre: Fluff, Insomnia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28657107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardy/pseuds/Guardy
Summary: Sometimes, true love is grand, meaningful gestures. Sometimes, it's driving four miles below the speed limit so your strange, beautiful oddball of a partner gets to nap on the job for a few more minutes.-This was supposed to be properly shippy, but I really just put some internal monologuing to all the wistful glances and it can prolly pass for gen if you don't look at it too hard.Uses S3E8 Insomnia as a plot hook, because I maintain that Johnny's being way too coherent by the end of it and figured I'd fix that.
Relationships: Roy DeSoto & Johnny Gage, Roy DeSoto/Johnny Gage
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Catnap

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt. I'm a tad rusty, but hey, I finished a thing! Almost gave up on finding a title and tagging this though, lol.   
> Also, a hearty thank you to everyone who mentioned looking forward to this on tumblr; I probably would've been too much of a chicken to post this without the lot of you - I haven't written proper fanfic in *ages*.
> 
> Originally posted over on my E! sideblog: https://johnnys-green-pen.tumblr.com/

Their last run had been, to put it mildly, a little unnecessary. They’d been substituting for another squad, all the way out in the canyons, and for what? A college student who’d fallen asleep on a picnic table, curled around a physics textbook. Not that Roy couldn’t emphasize, but…

The young man had sheepishly admitted to being hungover and tired and desperately cramming for a test the next day until he’d nodded off, before slinking back home to (hopefully) catch some shut-eye. Roy and Johnny had calmed down the concerned old lady who’d called them, and then they’d gone to pack up their things and get home as fast as possible.

Johnny yawned deeply as he slid the drug box back into its compartment. 

“Man,” he said, “must be nice to just fall asleep like that.”

“You usually have no problems doing that, either,” Roy stated, voice schooled into a practiced calm. It’d been _days_ now, and in his opinion it was about time for this particular hang-up to pass. Not only did the incessant fixating on Johnny’s lack of sleep get on his nerves, Johnny also seemed… well, honestly, kind of miserable, and that was putting Roy more on edge than he was willing to publicly admit.

“Believe me, I can hardly remember what sleep feels like,” Johnny replied with a sluggish wave of his arm before he slammed the compartment door shut with much more force than necessary. He stared at it for a second, face utterly blank. “Oops,” he added.

Roy looked at him and his ashen complexion and the deep, dark smudges under his eyes, and was inclined to believe him. Johnny, usually so vibrant and full of energy, looked haggard and washed-out against the bright colors of summer and the heat of the August sun burning down on them. As eminently silly as the whole thing was, it was still a genuine problem doing genuine harm. Despite everything, Johnny was suffering, and Roy hated to see that, even if it was pretty much self-inflicted and for reasons that made sense to nobody but Johnny himself.

“Maybe we can fabricate a night run for you,” Roy said after they’d climbed back into the squad and Johnny had informed dispatch that Squad 51 was available. “Won’t have the klaxon, but…”

Johnny perked up a little, before sinking back into the seat with a sigh. 

“Nah. Wouldn’t be the same.”

“Well,” Roy said, started the motor, turned the squad around and put them on the way back home, wheels crunching against loose gravel and bone-dry dust, “the offer stands.”

Johnny just made an indistinct noise and slid a bit further down the passenger seat. He stayed uncommonly quiet, especially by his standards. Roy had to keep his eyes on the narrow, winding path, but after a few minutes, he started to notice a slight movement in his peripheral vision. When he was finally able to chance a look, he found his partner leaning against the passenger door, his head bumping against the glass with every pothole, but he was still obviously losing his struggle to stay awake. Every time he nodded off, he slumped forward, just to jerk back upright as the motion startled him awake.

“Johnny,” Roy asked, “are you alright?”

His partner flinched and pulled away from the door. He looked around, blinked. 

“Wha- what? Me? Sure I’m alright,” he said, but it came out a little slurred. Roy’s concern must’ve shown on his face, because Johnny’s demeanor suddenly changed, and he got that dreadful, stubborn glint in his eyes. He sat up a bit straighter still, arms crossed, face straight ahead. His head tipped forward again mere moments later, and he snapped back upright once more. Something that looked like genuine despair flitted across his delicate features, like a small, cornered mammal, and Roy fervently hoped that it wasn’t him somehow doing the cornering.

Johnny seemed to steel himself, shook his head a little, blinked again. 

“What do you think is for lunch today?” He asked into the silence. There was a desperate edge to his voice that didn’t match the trivial question.

Now it was Roy’s turn to blink. “Johnny, we already _had_ lunch, remember?” 

Going by Johnny’s blank expression, he probably didn’t.

“I _know_ that,” he replied nonetheless - deeply indignant, but the edge was still there, and he clearly knew that something was slipping away from him. “I obviously meant the… other thing, the late one.”

“Dinner?” Roy asked.

A short pause. Then: “Dinner? What about it?”

And at that point, Roy decided that he’d had enough and stopped the squad at the side of the road. 

“Johnny,” he said sternly, “look at me.” 

Johnny turned his head and glanced at him from the corner of his eye, but that wasn’t good enough, so Roy reached over and tugged on Johnny’s shoulder until he turned a little, before sliding his hand over and guiding Johnny’s face in the right direction with a hand against his jaw. His partner looked confused, but a bit more awake at least. This didn’t keep Roy from fishing his flashlight from his shirt pocket, though, and shining it into Johnny’s bloodshot eyes. He flinched and tried to pull away, but Roy still had his hand against his face, gently but firmly holding him in place. 

“What the hell, Roy,” Johnny muttered, but Roy just gently shushed him. 

“Can you smile for me?” he asked, and the way Johnny’s lips quirked up into a smile, however tired, before he paused and asked “... wait, why?” was oddly touching in a way he couldn’t quite put into words. 

“Right, hold your arms out in front of you like this,” he said instead, and demonstrated the motion, arms straight, hands parallel to the floor. Johnny did as he was asked, and Roy noticed that his hands were maybe shaking slightly, but Johnny was holding them steadily at the same height. 

Then, Johnny finally put two and two together. He dropped his arms and his look turned incredulous.

“Roy, I’m not having a _stroke_ , I’m just really tired.” 

Roy gave Johnny a last, inquisitive look before he shrugged and started the motor again.

“You could barely string three coherent words together,” he said. “You’d have done the same thing in my stead. Why don’t you just give in and take a nap until we’re back?”

“Roy, we’re on a run, I can’t just go to sleep while we’re on a run,” Johnny replied. 

“That actually makes some kind of sense.” 

“Of course it does.” 

Roy sighed. “Look, maybe you should just take a sick day, go home and catch up on some sleep. I don’t think you should be working if it’s that bad.”

Johnny looked at him then, that hard-as-steel look he got when he wasn’t sure if he was being made fun of, and Roy still didn’t always know how to translate “I’m taking you seriously” into Insecure Johnny Speak, so he simply stayed silent and met Johnny’s searching gaze as best he could without driving the squad into a ditch. Whatever Johnny was looking for, he apparently found it and approved, and Roy could see him relax, could see his tense shoulders slacken. 

“Nah,” he finally said, “I’m fine when I’m working, it’s just this -” he indicated the road with a handwave - ”that’s a little bit hard to stay awake for.”

“Are you sure? Because earlier-”

“Roy… drop it. Just drop it.”

“Fine,” Roy said. It _wasn’t_ fine, but he could also tell that Johnny was frantically trying to figure out a way to stay awake and failing abysmally. It was a long drive back to the station, especially if he stuck religiously to the speed limits, maybe went two, three miles per hour slower than necessary, just to be perfectly sure he was under the limit, of course. With some luck, the highway would be backed up, too, buying him a few more minutes as he circumvented the traffic. He estimated it’d be about five minutes before Johnny would be fast asleep, which left plenty of time for a thorough nap.

To Johnny’s credit, he stayed awake for seven, and he probably would’ve clung onto consciousness for even longer if Roy hadn’t nipped any attempt at conversation in the bud by outright refusing to contribute more than the occasionally vague hum. This turned out to be a surprisingly difficult task: Johnny was fighting to stay awake like a man drowning, and every one of Roy’s instincts screamed at him to help somehow, no matter how often he told himself that his partner was in no real danger, he’d just lose him to a nap for half an hour, not to some unknowable ocean forever. Roy had never fully grasped how much looking out for Johnny had become second nature, a permanent part of him, and this sudden urge to touch his shoulder and shake him awake (or better yet, to pull him close and keep him safe and comfortable and-) hadn’t really been how he’d wanted to find out. Not that it had been a huge revelation in the first place - more like a tiny, newfound certainty.

Johnny, meanwhile, kept slumping to the side and against the door, eyes fluttering shut and being forced back open again until he finally settled against the metal and his eyelids stayed down no matter how hard he fought, long lashes drawing quivering shadows across high cheekbones. His position didn’t look comfortable in the slightest; his shoulder was pressing against the door, his neck was angled in a way that would probably leave him sore, and his head resting directly against the window was almost certainly making for a very bumpy ride… but at least he was asleep now, for whatever good that little nap would do. 

After a few more minutes of watching Johnny’s hair vibrate with the motions of the window, Roy sighed and pulled the squad over, before digging out his jacket, balling it up so that nothing sharp was poking out, and sliding over to get the jacket between Johnny’s head and the window, hoping that the continued rumbling of the engine would be enough to keep his partner from waking up. He had to put his arms around him to get the jacket behind his head, pulled him away from the window with one hand and slid the jacket-pillow in place with the other. And again, there was that urge to just pull Johnny into his arms instead and stay like that for as long as they could. Heck, Johnny might actually let him if there was nobody watching, if it was just the two of them, alone; he’d turned it into a hobby to get as close to Roy as he could lately, anyway, inching closer and closer until Roy had gotten used to the brush of Johnny’s arm against his. They’d probably have to talk about that, eventually, but not now, not yet. Maybe never. Roy carefully settled Johnny back against the door, in a hopefully more comfortable position, his head resting on the jacket, and then wove the squad back into traffic. 

The highway was indeed backed up enough to justify taking the scenic route, but he still arrived back at the station far too quickly. Johnny still looked exhausted, and Roy had decided at the halfway point that he’d do his best to get Johnny into the dorms without waking him up, no matter what this would do to his partner’s fragile dignity - but in the end, Johnny woke up as soon as they came within a few blocks of the station, so familiar with these streets that he recognized them even while asleep. He blinked awake slowly, rubbed a hand across tired brown eyes, and then looked around, taking in his environment. Roy’s jacket slid down and vanished somewhere between door and seat as Johnny sat upright and yawned deeply. 

“We’re almost home,” Roy said. 

“I know,” Johnny replied, and for a moment it looked like he was about to say something, complain about Roy not waking him up after he nodded off, perhaps, but in the end he just smiled at Roy - one of the particularly lopsided, mischievous ones - and added “not a single word to Cap, yeah?”

“Not one word,” Roy agreed with a little smile of his own.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Dog Days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29607036) by [Guardy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardy/pseuds/Guardy)




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